page_title: Marian Rejewski
section_title: Britain
hierarchical_section_title: Marian Rejewski / In France and Britain / Britain
caption_attribution_description: English: Marian Rejewski(born on August 16, 1905 in Bydgoszcz, Poland – died on February 13, 1980 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist, helped decipher Enigma. In the photo as second lieutenant (signals), Polish Army in Britain, in late 1943 or in 1944 Polski: Marian Rejewski(urodzony 16 sierpnia 1905 w Bydgoszczy – umarł 13 lutego 1980 w Warszawie) - polski matematyk i kryptolog, pomógł odszyfrować Enigmę.
context_page_description: Marian Adam Rejewski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence. Over the next nearly seven years, Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski developed and used techniques and equipment to decrypt the German machine ciphers, even as the Germans introduced modifications to their equipment and encryption procedures. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II the Poles, at a conference in Warsaw, shared their achievements with the French and British, thus enabling Britain to begin reading German Enigma-encrypted messages, seven years after Rejewski's original reconstruction of the machine. The intelligence that was gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what was code-named Ultra and contributed—perhaps decisively—to the defeat of Germany.
  In 1929, while studying mathematics at Poznań University, Rejewski attended a secret cryptology course conducted by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, which he joined in September 1932.
context_section_description: Rejewski and Zygalski were inducted as privates into the Polish Armed Forces on 16 August 1943 and were posted to a Polish Army facility in Boxmoor, cracking German SS and SD hand ciphers. The ciphers were usually based on the Doppelkassettenverfahren ("double Playfair") system, which the two cryptologists had already worked on in France. British cryptologist Alan Stripp suggests that "Setting them to work on the Doppelkassetten system was like using racehorses to pull wagons." On 10 October 1943, Rejewski and Zygalski were commissioned second lieutenants; on 1 January 1945 Rejewski, and presumably also Zygalski, were promoted to lieutenant. When Gustave Bertrand fled to England in June 1944, he and his wife were provided with a house in Boxmoor, a short walk from the Polish radio station and cryptology office, where it seems likely that his collaboration with Rejewski and Zygalski continued.
  Enigma decryption, however, had become an exclusively British and American domain; the Polish mathematicians who had laid the foundations for Allied Enigma decryption were now excluded from making further contributions in this area.  By that time, at Bletchley Park, "very few even knew about the Polish contribution" because of the strict secrecy and the "need-to-know" principle.
caption: Marian Rejewski, second lieutenant (signals), Polish Army in Britain, in late 1943 or in 1944, 11 or 12 years after he first broke Enigma
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